Developers are interested in the EB-5 program because of the access to quick and cheaper funding, rather than seeking regular, traditional funding. Banks require developers to put in their own equity and the EB-5 funds can fulfill this need. Associating the project with a regional center allows the Job Creating Entity to show the required jobs were calculated indirectly. They do not have to be direct jobs.

The advantage of using a regional center is you can use direct, indirect and induced jobs when proving proof of the creation of 10 full-time jobs per investor. So, the main advantage is meeting the job count requirement.

There are significant benefits including marketing your project through an EB-5 Regional Center. The biggest challenge is finding your investors. Hopefully, the EB-5 Regional Center has significant experience in marketing in China and other markets. If you do not have this experience, it would be very difficult to break into the market on your own. Furthermore, for each investor, you must show that 10 jobs or 10 indirect or induced jobs were created per investment. If you fund a project through an EB-5 Regional Center, you can show you have created 10 indirect jobs per investor via economic modeling.

You may not need a regional center if your project can hire 10 new United States employees for each investor. A regional center would allow you to count "indirect" jobs created in the area where the project is located (e.g., taxi drivers; restaurant employees in the area; etc.).

In most cases, projects use a Regional Center to develop when the requisite amount of jobs that need to be created per investor (10 per investor) is difficult to meet. Projects under Regional Centers can utilize "indirect job creation", which makes it easier to hit that requirement.

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